THE PICNIC.
Seated upon a stone which happened to be clean enough for even her
exacting taste, Mrs. Sanford was conversing with Mrs. Brown, a frowsy
lady whose house-keeping was a perennial source of offence to her
order-loving neighbor. Mrs. Brown was a miracle of tardiness,--the
last-comer at every gathering, the last guest to depart. Indeed, so
fixed were her friends in the habit of expecting her to be behindhand,
that she could have chosen no surer method of throwing into confusion
any plan wherein she was concerned than by appearing for once on time;
which, to do her justice, she never did. "She is so slow," Will Sanford
once said, "that she always looks solemn at a wedding, because the
grief of the last funeral has just got into her face. Her smiles appear
by the time another funeral comes."
On the present occasion Mrs. Brown had reached Mackerel Cove just
as preparations for dinner were being completed. Mrs. Sanford, who
had been superintending the making of the coffee, had seated her
plump person upon the stone mentioned to rest and get cool, when the
late-comer appeared. Mrs. Brown sank languidly upon the fallen trunk of
a tree.
"I didn't know as I should ever get here," she said. "My girl's gone
mad."
"Gone mad!" ejaculated the doctor's wife. "I knew something dreadful
would happen when you found that silver dollar, and kept it: that's
always unlucky. Is she really mad? You don't mean Selina?"
"No, not Selina, but the hired girl. She must be mad. She poked all my
hair-pins down a crack in the floor. Selina thinks she did it to plague
me; but I know she's crazy."
"I declare! The trouble you have with your girls beats every thing I
ever heard of. I should think you'd rather do the work yourself than
have them about."
"Oh! I must have a girl to shirk things on to," said Mrs. Brown.
"Shirk!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford. "Lawful sakes! I don't have time
to shirk. If I hadn't so much to do, I might find time to plan and
contrive to get rid of half my work; but now"--
The words died upon her lips as she caught sight of a buggy coming
along the shady wood-road. In it sat her daughter Patty, chatting
happily with Tom Putnam. The sight filled her with amazement little
mixed with pleasure. The lawyer might be a man after her husband's
heart; but he was not after hers. He constantly said things she could
not understand; he oppressed her as might an unguessed conundrum;
and, moreover, he was a dozen years older than her daughter. Clarence
Toxteth filled the measure of Mrs. Sanford's requirements when she
considered her daughter's matrimonial prospects, which, thrifty
housewife that she was, was not seldom. The young man was rich,
good-looking, trimly dressed; and Mrs. Sanford appreciated to the
full the advantages of the possession of money. The worthy lady was
not without a deeply-seated suspicion that Patty, in the depth of her
heart, preferred the lawyer to his more pretentious rival. The girl was
like her father, and looked at things in a way wholly unaccountable
to her mother, who saw only the other side of the shield. To-day Mrs.
Sanford had been at ease in her mind, believing Toxteth to have been
the chosen escort. She chanced to be out of the way when he arrived at
the picnic-ground, and supposed her daughter to be about somewhere.
What, then, was her dismay to perceive her driving up with Mr. Putnam,
as boldly and gayly as if she had never deceived her family!
"Is dinner ready, mother?" called the transgressor lightly, as they
drove up. "I am as hungry as three polar bears."
"Good-morning, Mrs. Sanford!" the lawyer said. "There is a delightful
smell in the air, as if you had been making coffee."
"So I have," she returned, a little mollified by the compliment
implied. "You are just in time: they are blowing the horn now."
And indeed, through the beautiful beech-woods rang the shrill cry
of a tin dinner-horn blown by lusty lungs. It sounded harsh enough
in the sylvan spaces; but not Pan himself could have piped more
enchantingly into the ears of the hungry country people scattered
about in the grove. The young folk came flocking towards the spot
where table-cloths, spread upon the mossy ground, were heaped with
that profusion of cake and other sweetmeats, and scarcity of any thing
eatable, by which a picnic-dinner is usually characterized. A pleasant
chattering and bustle followed, while the company seated themselves
around upon stones, stumps, moss-covered roots, or the green turf
itself. Harmless practical jokes were played, clumsy attempts at wit
laughed over, clever ruses employed by people who wished their being
together to have the appearance of the merest accident; and amid the
chatter, the laughter, and the rattle of crockery, the feast began.
Mrs. Sanford had pressed Mr. Putnam into her service to pour the
coffee, knowing of old that he was steady-handed and quick-witted, and
feeling not unwilling, moreover, to draw him away from Patty's side.
That young lady, being thus left to her own devices, curled herself
up in a soft mossy nook, between two huge beech-roots, the tree-trunk
behind her.
"I have a crow to pluck with you," the voice of Clarence Toxteth said
at her elbow.
"Oh, let's not pluck a crow!" she answered, without turning her head.
"It isn't pleasant; and nobody feels any better for it."
"But why did you tell me you were coming with Mr. Blood?"
"I beg your pardon," she said, laughing, and turning to flash her dark
eyes upon him. "I only said he came before you to ask me, and so he
did. You gave up too easily. I knew by that, that you didn't really
care whether I came with you or not."
"Care? I did care. I thought you had promised him: so I brought Miss
Purdy, and you know I can't endure her."
"I am sure she ought to be obliged to you."
"Well, there was nobody else."
"Was that the reason you came for me?" Patty said saucily. "Flossy,
what are you wandering about so for?"
"I am seeking what I may devour," Flossy answered, seating herself at
her cousin's feet. "But I do not find it. I'd like a square chunk out
of the side of a cow or a chicken. The sight of these deserts of cake
makes me sick."
"Make up your mind what you really would like," Clarence said,
"and I'll order it of the wood-nymphs. What will you have
first,--turtle-soup?"
"Oh, dear, no!" Flossy answered. "I like to know what I am eating, and
turtle-soup is all green fat and things. I'll eat a little pop-corn, if
you please. So saying I gayly munch and munch like an educated mooly
cow. Patty, where did you pick up Mr. Putnam?"
"Nowhere. He came after me."
"You didn't put him off with an evasive answer," Toxteth said in her
ear.
"He didn't ask me," she retorted. "He only told me he was coming to
take me."
"You girls like to be bullied," the young man muttered crossly.
"Mercy sakes!" cried the shrill voice of Mrs. Brown, behind the tree at
whose roots they were seated. "I thought I heard dishes rattling; but I
didn't think dinner'd begun."
"Not only begun, but finished," Patty cried, springing up. "Let's go
down to the beach, Flossy."